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Worldwide, climate change adaptation in coastal areas is a growing challenge. The most common solutions such as seawalls and breakwaters are expensive and often lead to unexpected disastrous effects on the neighboring unprotected areas. In recent years, this awareness has guided coastal managers to adopt alternative solutions with lower environmental impact to protect coastal areas, defined as Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs). NBS are quite popular around the world but are often analyzed and implemented individually at pilot sites. This contribution analyzes the effectiveness of two NBS to mitigate coastal impacts (coastal flooding and erosion) under three historical storms along the Emilia-Romagna coasts and the induced improvements due to their potential integration. Through numerical simulations with XBeach, this study demonstrated that the presence of seagrass meadows of Zostera marina produces an average attenuation of 32 % of the storm peak with a maximum attenuation of 89 % in incoming wave height. Seagrass also mitigates flooded areas and maximum inundation depths by 37 % and 58 % respectively. The artificial dune leads to higher mitigation in terms of inundation of the lagoon (up to 75 %), also avoiding any morphological variations behind it. Seagrass has also been shown to be able to reduce beach erosion volumes up to 55 %. The synergic effect of the two NBS improves the capacity to mitigate both inundation (with a benefit of up to 77 % for flooded area attenuation with respect to cases without any defenses) and coastal erosion. Results of the study suggest that the two NBS will work together to produce co-benefits in terms of preservation of their efficiency, development of habitats for organisms and vegetation species, and thereby offering an important social value in terms of possible tourism, recreation and research.

This research is focused on testing the sensitivity of this model to its input parameters by verifying the effects on key output indicators for coastal managers, such as wave run-up, beach erosion, shoreline retreat and inundation. The model is applied to Cesenatico and calibrated based on the data measured during an extreme storm event, with the mid-term purpose of calibrating the model for the Emilia-Romagna coast, which suffers from subsidence, erosion and flooding.

Arpa Emilia-Romagna ha condotto nel 2012 la campagna periodica di rilievo topobatimetrico e sedimentologico lungo la costa regionale. I risultati mostrano che il 35% delle spiagge è in buono stato, mentre il 65% del litorale presenta vari livelli di criticità. nonostante l’efficacia del ripascimento, l’erosione continua.

Il presente studio analizza il fenomeno dell’erosione costiera mediante l’utilizzo della modellazione numerica. In particolare viene presentata un’analisi dell’evoluzione del profilo di spiaggia in caso di mareggiate intense, con quantificazione del fenomeno di erosione della spiaggia. Sull’area di indagine, un tratto di costa emiliano-romagnola compreso tra Cesenatico e Cervia, sono stati condotti rilievi topo-batimetrici e sedimentologici, prima e dopo un evento di mareggiata intenso. Mediante l’utilizzo del software di modellazione XBeach (Roelvink et al., 2009), è stato simulato il comportamento della spiaggia soggetta a tale evento. Contestualmente, è stata effettuata l’analisi di sensitività del modello in relazione alla variazione dei suoi parametri di input. Tale analisi ha reso possibile una successiva calibrazione del modello in riferimento all’area di studio. I risultati evidenziano l’importanza di una buona calibrazione dei parametri facua, facAs e facSk, legati alla forma dell’onda e del parametro fw legato all’attrito al fondo.